Not Like the Movie: A Dare Leads to Death

By MICHAEL deCOURCY HINDS,

Published: October 19, 1993

Correction Appended

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 18—
Like the hero of the new movie "The Program," two teen-agers from Pennsylvania and another from Long Island lay in the middle of two different roads at night, apparently to prove they had nerves of steel. Unlike the movie hero, they did not walk away unharmed.

Michael A. Shingledecker Jr., 18, of Polk, Pa., was killed almost instantly about 1 A.M. Saturday when he and a friend were struck by a pickup truck while lying on a two-lane highway in Polk, a small borough in western Pennsylvania. His friend, Dean G. Bartlett, 17, was critically injured. And Michael Macias, 17, of Syosset, L.I., was critically injured when he was hit by a car at 10:40 P.M. Saturday as he lay in the middle of Bayville Avenue in Bayville.

Law-enforcement authorities and family members said the teen-agers were apparently copying the daredevil stunt from "The Program," in which the college football hero shows how tough he is by lying down in the middle of a busy highway as cars and trucks whiz by in the dark. There are fears that scores of other young men are copying the stunt.

In a similar accident, a New Jersey man was struck by two cars and killed Tuesday night. In that case, the police in Bordentown said that a man identified as Marco Birkhimer, a 24-year-old handyman who had been drinking heavily, sat in the middle of Route 206 in Bordentown on a dare from a companion.

The Police Chief of Bordentown township, George Moyer, said the police had no evidence that Mr. Birkhimer was influenced by the movie, but he said the similarity was too striking to overlook. "In the movies you jump out a window and walk away, but in real life we pick up the pieces, as we did with Birkhimer," he said.

Mr. Birkhimer was apparently the only victim who was drinking; the police in New York and Pennsylvania said there was no indication that the teen-agers had used drugs or alcohol before engaging in the stunt.

There seems to be little question that many young men have been imitating the stunt in "The Program."

"My son saw the movie last weekend, and I know he was playing the game because the kids playing it with him told me," Patricia Shingledecker said in a telephone interview today just after attending her son's funeral in Stoneboro, Pa. "They said about 30 other kids were playing the game a few miles up the road in another town the same night."

In the Long Island case, Detective Thomas Ketaltas of the Nassau County Police Department said that students who witnessed the accident told him that Mr. Macias had been imitating the scene in the movie. Defense From Film Company

The R-rated movie, which was directed by David S. Ward, was released last month by Touchstone Pictures, a division of the Walt Disney Studios. Touchstone Pictures released a brief statement tonight offering condolences to the families, but it defended the film. "The scene in 'The Program' clearly depicts this adolescent action as an irresponsible and dangerous stunt by a troubled and heavily intoxicated individual, and in no way advocates or encourages this type of behavior," the statement said. "This is a tragedy and our sympathies go out to the families of those involved."

In the Pennsylvania case, the police said the driver of the pickup truck did not see the boys, who were wearing dark clothes and were lying in the center of the road, parallel to the yellow line dividing the lanes. "I was told they did this as a dare," Trooper David Wargo, the investigating officer, said on Sunday. As many as four teen-agers were lying on the road at one time, the boys told the police. Neither the driver of the truck nor any of the other drivers involved in this spate of accidents was charged with any violation.

"As a parent," Ms. Shingledecker said, "I know that 95 percent of what gets on TV or in the movies gets into kids' heads. Why are they putting these movies out for our children?"

She said that her son graduated from high school last year and had planned to enter college in January to study criminology. He had hoped to become an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the Long Island accident, a 17-year-old girl told the Nassau County police that she was driving her 1987 Plymouth westbound on Bayville Avenue east of West Harbor Drive. The area, which has a large parking lot for summer beach traffic, has long been a gathering place for young people. Theycruise along the road, park along the beach and gather in small groups to sip beer and "hang out," Mr. Ketaltas said.

He said the teen-age driver reported seeing a group of 50 to 75 young people standing on either side of the avenue. She said she slowed down as she passed the group, then struck something in the road. She said she did not know until later that she had struck Mr. Macias, a football player and a senior at Syosset High School. Account From Witness

Mr. Ketaltas said it was not clear whether the injured teen-ager had been lying on the yellow double line in the middle of the two-lane road or in the middle of the westbound lane when he was struck.

Nadine Pacifico, a student at Syosset High School, said she had witnessed the Saturday night accident. "They were all talking about a bunch of kids in a movie and they were going to try it, but no one believed that they would really do it," she said. But the next thing she knew, she said, Mr. Macias put his life at risk. "We just turned around and he was lying in the street," she said.

Anther student, who asked not to be identified, said: "It happened so quick that no one knew, and then kids started running after the car. What happened was, he got caught under the car and he was dragged. It was pretty bad."

Once again, it seems that a movie or television show has caught young people up in a something they cannot handle or understand. Last week, MTV announced that it was removing references to starting fires in its "Beavis and Butt-head" show after a five-year-old boy in Ohio copied a scene from the cartoon show and set his family's mobile home on fire, killing his younger sister. The child's mother blamed the show, saying it had encouraged her son to play with fire.

The amount of violence on television and in movies has become a major public health problem, said Dr. Robert D. Gould, a Manhattan psychiatrist who is president of the National Coalition on Television Violence. "It's so unfortunate that movies and television programs have role models doing dangerous things that children will imitate," he said. "If a football player is made a hero for doing something dangerous, then kids will vie with each other for who can be most like the movie hero. Only in this case, the bravest may be the deadest."

Dr. Mimi Mahon, who has conducted studies of adolescent deaths, said that young people feel immortal and that many are driven by peer pressure to ignore their own fears. "There's no such thing as a realistic or reasonable fear for them -- that you should be afraid to go out and sit in front of cars coming down the highway," said Dr. Mahon, who is also an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jack Garner, a film critic with the Gannett News Service, wrote in his Sept. 23 review of "The Program" that he feared the impact of the scene. He gave the movie a poor review and, in reference to the highway stunt, wrote: "I dread the day I read about some real high school jocks who've been inspired to duplicate that irresponsible film sequence."

Photos: A scene from the film "The Program," in which college students lie down in the center of a busy highway. (Touchstone Pictures & Samuel Goldwyn Company); Michael A. Shingledecker Jr., 18, was killed Saturday when he lay down on a highway in Polk, Pa. (Associated Press) (pg. A22) Maps of Pennsylvania showing location of Polk, and of Long Island showing locaiton of Bayville Ave. (pg. A22)

Correction: October 20, 1993, Wednesday An article yesterday about accidents among teen-agers who emulated a daredevil stunt from a new movie misstated the day of the funeral for Michael A. Shingledecker Jr., who was killed by a car while lying on a highway in Polk, Pa. His funeral was yesterday, not Monday.